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Im on wheel of time book 6....(is it worth it to get to book 12?)


metaldragon

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The stories are good but the seem SOOOO drawn out.

It feel like Robert was a little TOO descriptive when writing the series. I feel myself zoning out when listening 1/3 of the time.

Are the last 3 books worth it to slug through the rest of the series?

Doesn't make it any better that i gt spoiled that i have to wait until book 9 to figure out who the heck killed Asmodian!

My hunch is Lain was given an order by Morain before the incident (forgive me if i spelled that wrong i only listen to the audio)

1. was someone he knew

2. doesn't seem likely was another forsaken since they appear to not know what happened to him.
3. Elain to weak at the time and Aveinda had no motive to kill him.


is it worth slugging through the next 5 books to get to brandons stuff!

 

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it's up to you and what you've enjoyed most from the series so far, I guess. A lot of people really don't like books 7-10, and I can understand. Stuff definitely starts to get out of control, and then house politics and stuff can lull for a while. So if that stuff really turns you off, then it will be a little tough to get through.

For me, I read WoT after A Song of Ice and Fire series, and I didn't mind the politics and worldbuilding as much as some people do. Yeah, character development is a slow process, but it makes sense given the characters. Rand and Perrin are some stubborn S-O-B's.

For me, book 6 and onward all became about Mat, personally. he was by far my favorite character, and I would just keep reading until I got to his next chapter. But heck, you're already 6 books in. Might as well continue now. Especially worth it for the super epic ending, IMHO.

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It is definitely worth reading through the series, and though I have to admit that I really did not like the upcoming Perrin arc, I - like Gamma - absolutely love Mat! Some of it is a bit slow in book 7-9 (I really liked 10), but I can promise you that the climax of each of them makes it worth reading through any lull you might find. I literary  jumped up and down throughout most of the last chapters of each and every one of them. Oh, yeah, and 12-14 are absolutely epic. The scene where Egwene and another Aes Sedai discuss the colour of a dress from the Gathering Storm is amazing (I am not joking here. You'll understand when you get there)!

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Eh, at this point I am not even sure anymore. For a very long time I was a preacher for The Wheel of Time, but now I am of the opinion that Brandon is so much better, it might be a significant step down to read Jordan. In some ways, you are done with the best parts of the series; in others, you won't get to the really good stuff until the last 3-4 books. Then again, you need to go through the worst books to get there. 

 

In the end of the day, I think I'll tell you to read them, because they are important and influential books for the genre, and Brandon specifically. They are also not bad, but only about half of the books are actually good. I guess the Wheel really shines as a series, not as a collection of individual books.

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Personally, as far as I'm concerned the worst books are five (THE AMAZING CIRCUS ADVENTURE!, or Nynaeve and Elayne compete to annoy me) and ten, where the massive number of characters makes the story kind of choke because all of them show up and therefore don't have a chance to actually accomplish anything. While I'm apparently in the minority on this, I really like 7 to 9. I'm not really sure why they get a bad rap, really. Granted, they include the begining of the second most annoying arc with Perrin and Faile:

See, Rand hears about what Masema is up to, and sends Perrin on a secret mission to bring him in quietly. This rapidly turns into a lengthy, stupid detour, and after reaching him in book 8, Faile gets kidnapped by the Shaido and Perrin goes to rescue her. This does not get resolved until book 11 courtesy of a pile-up of annoying problems.

 

1. Rand sends Perrin secretly with strict orders to stay out of contact under cover of a dramatic falling-out until he can bring Masema back. Reasonable enough; openly contacting him could create bad press and there are many reasons for Rand to avoid going in person.

2. They gate in a good distance from where he actually is. All right, walking right into his camp without scouting could end badly.

3. Faile has decided to play spymaster, so she goes off on a "hunting trip", meaning she's susceptible to kidnapping.

4. Meanwhile, Perrin meets Masema, and he is crazy and unreasonable. Most pertinently, he refuses to just get gatewayed to Rand because only the Light Made Flesh should wield the One Power.

5. Perrin discovers Faile has been kidnapped, and everything comes together to become really stupid. Perrin obviously wants to rescue her quickly. He's still supposedly in Rand's bad books because of the mission, so he can't just pop back to headquarters and get help. Masema won't gate back, so he can't finish the mission in five minutes and then ask for help. Also, events in Rand's arc prevent him from contacting Rand directly and changing the plan slightly. So Perrin takes his guys, Masema, and a whole bunch of Masema's fanatics to hunt Shaido by gating around (Masema will accept gating for this because he's nuts and inconsistent) but by the time he finally catches up to them they've met up with enough other Shaido that a direct attack is flat-out doomed and they have literally hundreds of channelers.

 

They also introduce Casudene, who is one of the most annoying characters. She's a really old and smug Aes Sedai who decides to show up and bug Rand, and basically demands he treat her like a superior but refuses to act politely towards him. It makes her look arrogant and stupid; firstly Rand is the one who is in charge, and secondly he is entirely capable of just walking out on her.

 

Overall, though, they mark the beginning of the mass channeler-on-channeler fights that really make the series for me. The way gateways and sensing channeling work make for a very unique and interesting highly mobile style of combat.

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I like all the wheel of time, included books 7-10, although I did find the perrin subplot annoying. Mat, on the other hand, keeps getting better.

 

Anyway, the final decision on whether it is worth reading the books is yours. we don't know your tastes well enough to judge.

 

If you want to skip directly to the ending, it is possible to do it and just read a summary. http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/ is a very good site for that. maybe, once you've read the ending, you'll want to go back and see what you missed.

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I would say that if you're not enjoying yourself, there's no point slogging through the rest of the books. You can expect more of the same that you've read in books 3-6. The series does not shift gears until Brandon takes over. There's some great scenes, but you'll have to suffer through the horror that is Perrin's/Faile's completely worthless subplot. Ugh. Nothing is worth that.

 

Jordan only gets worse with drawn-out and meandering story arcs for books 7-9. Had Brandon not taken over, the series easily would have taken another 6 books to conclude. (This might not have been a bad thing, since I disliked how rushed everything was to clean up hanging threads and subplots in the last two books.)

 

It might be worth it to get to The Gathering Storm, since Brandon wrote that and I highly enjoyed how everything worked in that novel.

Edited by Moogle
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I'll say this: the payout at the end (the last three books) is well well worth the trek. No doubt it gets really slow. I took a 3 year break mid way through crossroads of twilight and had to do a full reread to get back into it. Seeing the characters struggle like that for so long and then really come into themselves is extremely cathartic. Especially at the end of book 12. That one really got me. 

Anyway, it is worth it, but if it seems like too much and you have other things to be reading/doing, you could take the shortcut and come out just fine. If you read the Tor.com rereads of the books, they are actually very detialed (though warning, the analysis sections give spoilers from down the road). Those books will go from only slightly satisfying (if that's how you feel) to 0 satisfying. But you can go back and read the chapters that sound exciting in the summaries if you feel like it. I highly recommend doing this if that is what it is going to take to push you to the final books. They are so so entertaining. 

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I am not sure what advice to give on this one. I have read and reread this series a number of times while waiting for Brandon's epic conclusion. It wasn't until the 4th time through that I really struggled with these books. there is a lot in there of redeeming quality. I really appreciated the Perrin arc when I first read it. He was and still is the character I resonate the most with. There is a LOT of character growth that happens in these books for all of the characters. The endings were all great IMO. I think they are worth reading. 

 

With that said however I feel like rereading some of these parts is as bad an idea as reliving Junior high. I grew a lot but... :wacko:

 

So...I guess my advice would be, If you can read them with out too much suffering, read them. If it becomes a chore at least read the endings.

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As others have said, if you have qualms, then it may not be worth it. I read pretty much all the books head-to-head, and because of that I didn't experience the slowing of the pace in books 7-10 in the same way as others did. In fact, I really enjoyed books 7, 9, and 10 almost as much as any of the other books (the climax of Winter's Heart is totally worth getting through Path of Daggers, which is actually the worst book, IMO).

I won't go too deep, but the slower books get a bad rap. If read as they were released, I can totally see why one would not like them. But read together, they form a more complete arc. Those books are much more about character development than progressing the plotline. As Gamma says, Mat's story is excellent as ever. Elayne is the only one I didn't like in those books.

Basically, if you want to see the characters learn to deal with everything on their own, then read these books. Brandon's contributions, and to a lesser extent Knife of Dreams, make up for these.

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Hmm every time there was a new WOT book i would do a reread of the entire series in the months leading up to it.

 

And i admit i skipped or skimmed 7-10 i just didnt enjoy them as much.

 

But id personally read the entire series at least once.

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Keep going. I read it all the way through, from the prequel to A memory of light, and I loved all the books, (except path of daggers, that book was from the devil I'm sure) it does get slow (that's a big part why I love Sanderson so much, he really knows how to keep everything interesting) but it was one of the greatest series I've ever read. I don't think you will be disappointed if you finish.

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Well, I apparently had a completely different take on the ending as everyone else!  I discovered WoT around the time Book 6 was new.  I re-read the series each time a new book was published.

 

I have zero inclination to read any part of any of the WoT series again.  The conflict and resolution of Rand vs. The Dark One was...I don't even have words; the ending that Jordan promises for years and years was already written and amazing was awful.  This explanation of the root/core conflict literally makes me regret reading the series more than once.  It retroactively destroyed previously fond memories.

 

Then again, journey before destination--but the destination sucks (I'm not even talking resolution here; the resolution was pretty good, all told--this is strictly the climax of it all).  I dunno if you played Mass Effect 3, or were like me and heavily invested in the game and then got hit with the Star Child randomly at the very end.  I had the same exact kind of reaction to both.

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Well, I apparently had a completely different take on the ending as everyone else!  I discovered WoT around the time Book 6 was new.  I re-read the series each time a new book was published.

 

I have zero inclination to read any part of any of the WoT series again.  The conflict and resolution of Rand vs. The Dark One was...I don't even have words; the ending that Jordan promises for years and years was already written and amazing was awful.  This explanation of the root/core conflict literally makes me regret reading the series more than once.  It retroactively destroyed previously fond memories.

 

Then again, journey before destination--but the destination sucks (I'm not even talking resolution here; the resolution was pretty good, all told--this is strictly the climax of it all).  I dunno if you played Mass Effect 3, or were like me and heavily invested in the game and then got hit with the Star Child randomly at the very end.  I had the same exact kind of reaction to both.

 

 

I strongly disagree. I thought the ending was great.

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 Mat definitely kept me reading through the slower books. Perrin is very hard to read but even he isn't bad compared to the female POVs. The females are the reason the middle books are so tough to read IMO.

The last Jordan book before his death was getting back to really good again. When Brandon takes over, the pace increases dramatically. 

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I'm currently on book 9 and I find it hard not to bang my head on the table for the women's POV. Mainly Elayne, she is amazing...ly annoying. Egwene kicks butt and so does Min Avenida and Elayne's Warder (idk what book she comes in so for OPs sake I won't say her name)

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